COMMON SENSUAL:
Sex and the African-American Male

Did you know that Black men are twice as likely to troll Facebook for sex than our paler counterparts? We’ve also got the largest amount of lifetime sex partners—the average magic number, less than half of mine (TMI), is 13—and we’re twice as likely to enjoy taking women from behind (duh). Or at least that’s what I read. Last month, Esquire magazine published its results from randomly polling 522 men of different ethnicities and marital statuses, aged 21 to 59, for their first ever “Sex and the American Man” survey. While these kinds of Cosmopolitan-style studies usually aren’t that deep, where else would you find out that 22% of Black men would enjoy sisters to stick a finger someplace it, uh, ordinarily doesn’t go? Pass the Purell and check out these stats.

There’s no casually snarky way to talk tossed salads, so let’s just leave that one alone. And yet survey says: Black men would prefer to be on the receiving end more often than any other race of guys. Thirty percent more of us worship our women’s backsides compared to other ethnicities as well, which is more of a no-brainer. (There aren’t exactly any Asian versions of bootylicious King or Smooth magazines.) But the biggest disparity that distinguishes Black men, at least according to brothers who read Esquire, is in the area of fidelity.

Let’s talk fantasy and ease into reality. Most men said there’s no celebrity lover they’d rather have sex with than their own wives. My personal Janet Jackson fixation has been hard to give up over the years, but I’d still have to agree. Making love (in the rain…I digress) is so much of an emotional, connective experience, it makes sense that most of us would rather spend it with our loving life partners. Fantasy has its place, but I don’t know Janet personally. Well, Black men told Esquire that, actually, they’d specifically take a night with “S&M” queen Rihanna over an evening with their spouses. Are we just more honest, or bigger cheaters?

Good question. Esquire says over half of us told them we’re actively unfaithful to our better halves. In fact, only 45% of us can’t imagine not cheating. Monogamy is not the Black man’s strong suit if almost half of us find it impossible to even picture being faithful. Compared with other races in the survey, Black men reportedly have the most active sex lives, and weighed against the magazine’s other findings, it’s easy to see how. We’re all pretty busy getting our salads tossed by the jump-offs we meet on Facebook, taking them from the rear with images of Rihanna in our heads while avoiding texts from our wives. Black men have the longest…sexual stamina as well—over 15 minutes, says Esquire—which comes in handy.

Even with all that, we’re only the second happiest with our sex lives, second (of course) to the White guys who grace the cover of Esquire every single month. Naturally, statistics mislead and can be used to prove pretty much anything you want (see: the Moynihan Report). Still, I’m ironically inclined to take “Sex and the American Man” both at face value and with a grain of salt. Apparently, half of the Black men surveyed also masturbate every day, and only 10% of us claim to have sex on a daily basis. Those numbers don’t exactly support the trite myth of the Black sexual superman.

Is this survey an accurate reflection of Black men's sex lives? And if it is…is that a bad thing? Speak on it!